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The company I work for is in the process of upgrading from Maximo 7.1 with Oracle 10g to Maximo 7.6 with SQL Server 2014. The program allows Chinese and thai characters in 7.1 and Oracle 10g through the front end without any issues but the new version with SQL Server 2014 replaces the Chinese/thai characters with ???.

Now, I know the SQL buffs out there will say that's what happens when Unicode data is entered into a non-Unicode field (nvarchar/varchar) and this I know. But...

I can change the fields on those tables to NVARCHAR and enter the data in those tables directly without any problems. For example, changing the organization description field to be NVARCHAR(8) instead of VARCHAR(8) and entering data directly into the table in the back end. The data shows up in the front end if I refresh the organizations application but entering data in the front end and saving does not save it in the backend. I end up with ??? still.

I'm in need of integration help. Developers of Maximo do not seem very keen on working with us on this. Has anyone else successfully integrated Maximo 7.6 with SQL Server 2014...in particular with Unicode characters like Chinese or thai?

mike
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Hosmerica
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  • Quite proably there's a process *between* your wish to store and the actual wrinting into the table. Might be, that there is a Stored Procedure in between where your values are going through `VARCHAR`. Sometimes there are functions involved or `Instead of` Triggers. I'd use SQL Server's profiler to monitor the actions taking place while writing the data. – Shnugo Feb 15 '17 at 22:38
  • I would have thought the same thing. I've looked for stored procedures and there aren't any to be found. My guess is all database calls are internal to the Maixmo application. I could turn logging on and see what is happening though. I'll give that a try. – Hosmerica Feb 15 '17 at 22:40
  • Hi @Hosmerica pardon me responding to old thread. Please did you ever find solutions for this? Our company had the same problem,,using sql server on maximo, tried to search unicode – RizkiDPrast Feb 03 '19 at 09:45
  • Hello RizkiDPrast. We did not find an answer to this. We ended up stopping our migration plans and have supported 2 versions of Maximo with 2 different back ends for the past couple of years. We had a conference call with the Maximo developers and they told us point blank that they don't intend to make it work. For SQL Server, their DB code from within the Maximo framework would have to label each field they're calling with an NVARCHAR but instead, they are calling VARCHAR. I have done numerous tests to show IBM that it can work but they insist that it can't be done. In short, use Oracle – Hosmerica Feb 11 '19 at 19:15

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One IBM document states Maximo does not support unicode in SQL Server.

Another says for Multi-language capabilities, you need DB2 or Oracle:

Database platform support

  • DB2 and Oracle databases supports UNICODE for Maximo Any language
  • combination is supported (for example, English as base language and Japanese and Arabic as secondary languages)
  • SQL Server does not support Maximo's implementation of UNICODE
Sun
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  • I've read the same things before posting. The SQL Server bullet point is misleading though. SQL Server does indeed support Unicode. I'm looking to see if any other users have tried this and if anyone has this working through a different configuration than we have while still using Maximo 7.6 / SQL Server. – Hosmerica Feb 16 '17 at 17:51
  • I guess the question is... even though SQL Server supports Unicode, does Maximo's implementation of unicode work in SQL Server. There's this forum post, but I'm not familiar with varcharmultiple. Its not in our Oracle database: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/forums/html/topic?id=77777777-0000-0000-0000-000014527393&ps=25 – Sun Feb 16 '17 at 19:12